Chemotherapy agent combined with antibodies could effectively treat colon cancer
Many women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer buy Tamoxifen to slow the progression of the disease.
Many women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer buy Tamoxifen to slow the progression of the disease. Recently, a group of Penn State College of Medicine researchers reported that a chemotherapy agent used to treat the condition may be combined with a cancer-fighting antibody to effectively address colon cancer.
Lead author Wafik S. El-Deiry and his colleagues tested the efficacy of lapatinib, a drug that has been approved for the treatment of breast cancer, in combination with antibodies such as mapatumumab and lexatumumab. These compounds act similarly to tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL), a naturally occurring molecule in the human body that signals cell death.
"We have discovered a mechanistic basis for combining these drugs that says that one drug upregulates the receptor for the other drug, and maybe now when we combine these two drugs, we'll get an even better synergy between them," El-Deiry explained.
He added that this could provide a molecular rationale for a new combination of treatments to address difficult-to-treat varieties of colorectal cancer.
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